The company plans to resell Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC) PRO/1000 T IP storage adapters, which are Gigabit Ethernet network interface cards designed to offload protocol processing functions from host processors. Customers would install the Intel iSCSI adapters on servers to access NetApp filers via iSCSI. Currently, the iSCSI option is only available for Windows servers, with a Linux version in the works.

NetApp now offers block-level storage systems for both Fibre Channel and Ethernet (IP) networks. Last fall, the company introduced the FAS900, its first SAN-enabled storage array (see NetApp Does the Storage Two-Step).

However, while NetApp ordinarily charges hefty fees for extra software options, it's giving away the iSCSI software free to current customers of its F800 and F900 NAS filers. Why? The company says it wants to "accelerate the technology's adoption."